Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I left my laptop on in the sun, on a surface with poor conductivity. As I opened it, I glimpsed it complaining of heat exhaustion before it powered off. (That’s happened to me before, too!) I let it cool off, but on booting Ubuntu, a terrifying message was all that appeared on the screen:

Error 16: Inconsistent filesystem structure

Uh oh. Did I lose everything? What haven’t I backed up lately? Indeed, what have I backed up lately?

I searched online for the error message, and took heart when others reported no data loss in various forums. Running fsck was suggested, though in at least one case they resorted to reinstalling the OS. No way I’m doing that!

My first instinct was to dust off my USB DVD writer and burn a Ubuntu rescue CD. This turned out to be unnecessary, but at least I was reassured when I used it to mount the Linux partition and found my files intact. Firing up fsck had no effect: I was still defeated by the same error message.

Playing with the GRUB command-line (by pressing “c” instead of selecting an kernel to boot) showed that the initrd image was corrupted, as selecting the newest image with the “initrd” command triggered the same error message.

The solution was easy. Boot up an older kernel, then download a fresh copy of the initrd image by running:

Ethan lived on the ground floor of my apartment at Stanford. Early in my degree, he finished his Masters, in financial mathematics I think. I’m uncertain because we rarely chatted about school! I’m sure his latest venture will succeed, and not just because he’s capable.

I was in Ottawa for a conference in '03. I skipped half of it to hang out with Ethan, who gave me a tour of the city where he grew up, which became challenging when a widespread blackout hit the region. On top of all this, I had FedExed a visa document to his parent’s house (which I needed to return to the US), and he went out of his way to deliver it to me.

A few years later, I was in China on vacation, mainly because I wanted to see the Guangzhou Trade Fair. I met up with Ethan. I thought we’d do little more than catch up over a meal. Well, we did chat over dinner: Ethan had worked in Hong Kong’s finance sector for a while, and was now living off savings while exploring China. I was still a starving student.

But then Ethan took us to a health spa in Shenzhen which was cheaper yet far more luxurious than the hotels we had been considering. For about $20 a day I got massages, food, spas, haircuts, movies, a place to sleep, etc. I never thought I’d get a pedicure in my life, but because it was effectively free, I had to try it.

Then in Hong Kong, we crashed at his place, which saved a lot of money. He took us on a whirlwind shopping and eating tour. Soon after, we had to part ways, but not before he showed us a website offering discounted rates at hotels in Guangzhou. We got a great deal at a great hotel across the street from the trade fair. At the check-in counter, the guy in front of us was livid when he learned how little we were paying.

He offered to take me on a tour of China after the trade fair was over, but I declined. I deeply regret my decision. What’s a few weeks of missed grad school? Ethan spoke three or more Chinese languages. He knew where to go. He had contacts everywhere. Clearly, the China luxury travel business is perfect for him.

Rahul lived a few apartments away from me in grad school. He mysteriously vanished one year. I heard later it was because he was “saving babies”. This raised yet more questions! Wasn’t he an engineer?

Certain problematic births are far less problematic when an incubator is available. Unfortunately, the cost of typical incubators often places them beyond the reach of poor remote villages, contributing to higher infant mortality. Rahul helped design a vastly cheaper incubator, and hopes to eventually supply one wherever babies are born.

I met Kumaran through his wife. I was a Teaching Assistant for an introductory computer science class she was taking. Kumaran wanted to meet partly because he wanted help recruiting people for his company. I was of no help: at the time, my engineer friends were already employed, and they were busy recruiting people themselves!

Total Phase’s biggest hit is a USB protocol analyzer, an invaluable tool when developing USB products. Kumaran loves being an engineer designing for engineers. They never bothered advertising since engineers tend to use logic to determine purchases, and their products are better and cheaper than those of their competitors. I saw parallels when I read about the HP200A, an audio oscillator that was profitable because it was the best and the cheapest.

My cousin Wade designed a simple tool to render CDs and DVDs unreadable. An easy motion etches deep parallel scratches into the media: Freddy Krueger for discs. Quick and safe. No batteries. No electricity. The disc stays in one piece, ready for recycling.

He used to work on hard drive platters at IBM (before they sold the division to Hitachi) so he knows what he’s doing. He verified his claims with AcoDisc, a data recovery company. After a single application of the Disc Eraser to a CD, the data was deemed unrecoverable.

I don’t burn much, let alone anything confidential, so it’s not something I need. However, I’m grateful for a sample he gave me: as a kind of therapy, I savagely mutilate CDs I receive as junk mail.

Dave was yet another electrical engineering student in my neighbourhood during grad school. I never would have guessed he would join the dark side and become a Pointy-haired Boss of a startup. Seriously though, I like tech companies with an engineer at the helm. And Dave’s hair is not pointy.

Years ago, a friend once pointed out that two people in the same room cannot easily get their laptops to talk to each other. Sure, there’s Bluetooth, ad-hoc wireless networking, and other hacks, but he was right: even now, it’s easiest for one party to verbally ask for contact details of the other. This is somehow troubling.

I remember a light-hearted news report I watched once, which described a gadget in Japan. You’d enter a few personal details, and carry it around. It would alert you if someone of the opposite sex nearby had the same gadget and had similar interests to you. What became of this? Couldn’t they do something like this so you would never have to spell out someone’s email address or type in a phone number?

Enter Bump, an app for iPhone and Android that attacks this problem in a cute way. Both sides run the app, then lightly bump their phones together to swap contact details, or other data. No physical contact is actually needed as the phones just have to be close enough, but smashing your fists together is more macho!

Kestrel lives a few streets away, which benefits me greatly because she is a good chef and a keen gardener. She also loves making hair accessories, and recently started selling them. Each handcrafted piece is unique and beautiful, like their creator.